Friends, Teachers, Countrymen
by hiddenhibernian
Summary: Some things remain the same, even with Hogwarts beneath the thumb of the Dark Lord. Severus celebrates the annual staff Christmas party his own way.


**This was originally written for Hoggywarty Christmas on Livejournal, my favourite fandom event.** **As always, my lovely beta Híril did a bang-up job; any remaining mistakes are my own.**

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 **Friends, Teachers, Countrymen**

 **-oOo-**

Alecto was whimpering in the corner, crouching with her back pressed against the wall, her head hidden somewhere between her knees.

Pity.

Severus would have liked to see the expression on her face, or – even better – delved into her mind for a moment, to see what highlights from her extensive catalogue of punishments doled out to others had surfaced to torment her.

Alecto had already left Hogwarts by the time Severus had entered those hallowed halls with ill-fitting robes and a head full of foolish imaginings. There seemed to be nothing original about her: a narrow mind filled with pure-blood fervour by other, deeper thinkers, with little wit or understanding. Only in her treatment of repeat offenders there was a glimmer of unusual imagination for someone of her kind. Alecto surpassed herself finding methods to get through to students who laughed in the face of her Unforgivables (before, not after – even the most foolhardy Gryffindors had the same nervous system as everyone else).

Seeing if he were right, or if Alecto were indeed a poor copy of Bellatrix Lestrange with no aspirations to originality, would have afforded Severus some rare amusement.

Advancing further into the room, he stumbled across the prostrate form of someone not too strict about their personal hygiene. The smell was most often encountered by anyone entering the Quidditch changing rooms, but as this was the staff room Severus deduced that Argus Filch was paying a rare visit.

It was hardly a huge leap of faith, considering that he had done so on Severus' invitation.

Ever since the latter's ascent to the post as Headmaster, the caretaker had treated him with gratifying deference. Or it would have been gratifying, had Severus cared about the opinion of anyone who weren't already dead.

Argus twitched as Severus' boot disturbed his rest, but he just snored and rolled over again, pressing his cheek to the floor.

Severus had at last found a test subject for his variation on Amortentia, laced with a healthy dose of sleeping draught. In a few hours' time Argus might give Alecto an unpleasant surprise, had she not already been beyond interruptions in the misery of her own mind.

At the very end of the staffroom, beneath the festive garlands Argus had attached to anything that stuck out from the walls, Severus found Mrs Norris. Her tail was swishing from one side to the other, and her yellow eyes were fixed on the cowering creature in front of her. One could almost see her thought process, such as it was: it wasn't precisely a mouse, but it acted like one. If she pounced, would it taste like a mouse?

"In a spot of bother, Amycus?"

The tiny creature jumped up and down in agitation, and Severus had to fight the temptation to bring his boot down on it, thus making the world a slightly better place. He sighed and picked up his Deputy Head instead. "I do apologise – I didn't recognise you at first."

Amycus squeaked and peeped in his palm, but the pitch was much too high for a human ear to make any sense of. Severus put him down on top of the mantlepiece, where he should be out of Mrs Norris' reach.

Should, not would – in Severus' experience, the cat seldom gave up when she had her mind set on something.

Explaining to the Dark Lord why his henchman had been savaged by a cat would be rather difficult, hence the wards that had alerted Severus to Amycus' plight in the first place. However, he had no intention of telling the man himself.

On second thought, it might be amusing to hear what he had to say. Severus did a complicated movement with his wand and suddenly the room filled with profanities.

"– will have your testicles fed to Nagini! You did this, you bastard – you put something in my tankard at dinner. I'll get you for this!"

"How could I have tampered with your beer when you were guarding it the whole time?" It was nonsense, of course – Severus had slipped the potion into Amycus' cup of tea in the staffroom earlier that afternoon.

"I'll make you pay, if it's the last thing I do – that cat almost got me! I demand you restore –" His voice disappeared abruptly as Severus tired of his complaints.

"You are hardly in a position to make demands, Amycus. Do try to survive the next few hours – I'm sure it will wear off soon. The students will insist on having their fun before the Christmas holidays begin, I'm afraid."

Severus spun around on the spot, leaving Amycus and Mrs Norris to their uneasy stand-off.

Traditionally, the Hogwarts staff Christmas party took place on the last Saturday before the end of the term. In previous years, the staff room had been filled to the brim with excited voices and the smell of mulled wine, with Charmed decorations and Celestina Warbeck competing to fill any void left in the conversation with Christmas music.

For quite some years, Severus had brought along his special potions too.

The unlucky sod who had to remain sober in case the students kicked off (anything short of grievous bodily harm was likely to be overlooked that night) was in charge of distributing them to the unsuspecting victims, and almost as much fun was had by trying to spot who was being dosed with what as when enjoying the effects. Minerva had almost set fire to Albus' beard one year in her haste to grab the black potion from behind Poppy's back.

It had been a good party that year – Severus hadn't made it into his own bed until dawn.

As a student, he had dismissed most of his teachers as dried-up old sticks, content to teach because they were unable to achieve something in the real world. Like most of his teenage judgements, it had been breathtakingly wrong – he just hadn't expected to be proven wrong quite in such a manner.

Being stuck in an isolated castle surrounded by teenage hormones augmented by magic made one rather inventive when it came to finding a way to while away the long evenings. Add to that the general tendency of wizards and witches becoming more proficient at all sorts of magic with age, and one could easily stumble upon scenes that would make even a hardened Death Eater raise their eyebrows.

Brewing potions for the party had been an enjoyable diversion during the year as well – Severus had fine-tuned his collection as the years went by, and could probably have made a tidy sum of money if he had ventured to release them on the open market.

However, recent events had put paid to any such intentions.

None of his colleagues – he refused to dignify the Carrows with the word – had accepted their invitation to official party. If there was an unofficial one, they certainly knew better than putting it on tonight.

Severus had reached for a different section in his arsenal of potions this year, but he was equally confident in the outcome. In the morning, all would be forgotten – the Carrows and their loyal servant Filch would return to the mockery of a school Hogwarts had become, and the worst that might ail them would be the lingering memory of a bad dream.

But he wasn't quite finished.

Soundlessly, Severus swept down the corridors, surrounded by the castle like a second skin. He had always believed Albus relied on superior intelligence to appear all-knowing; it had come as a surprise to find how much information Hogwarts itself imparted to its Headmaster.

Severus could feel the heartbeats of the sleeping students and the relentless bustling of the house-elves, already preparing the next day's meals.

As he reached Filius' office, he didn't need to knock on the door to ascertain its occupant's frame of mind.

Indeed, doing so would have been counter-productive. His carefully modified cheering potion had been designed to remind Filius of happier days and the season of goodwill to come. It had seemed appropriate – Filius loved Christmas, and Severus would have been hard pressed to name anyone with a kinder heart.

Even now, when Filius wove his well-intentioned spell around his students without any magic whatsoever, they left with a new spring in their step.

Satisfied with his handiwork, Severus moved on towards the Hospital Wing before he recalled the likely effects of the potion he had slipped into Poppy's morning coffee. Perhaps he had better proceed directly to Rolanda's quarters.

On the bright side, there would be no need to pay a visit to the greenhouses either.

Rolanda was soundly asleep, so Severus couldn't judge the effectiveness of his concoction; not that she had had any complaints last year. If memory served correctly, she had, in fact, shared far too many details over breakfast, to the point where Filius had had to cut her off. He did not object to his colleagues amusing themselves as well as they could, he had said to general approval, but there was no need to tell anyone which body parts had gone where. Matters of technical detail were better left to the imagination.

Filius' definition of technical would have shocked some of his mature students profoundly.

Severus proceeded to the library where Irma was sitting at her desk, oblivious to the whispering of his robes as he carefully wound his path across the worn stone slabs lining the floor.

The expression on her face was beatific – all the little lines on her forehead had been smoothed out, and the corners of her lips were turned slightly upwards. Severus hadn't seen her look so happy since Albus had approved her request to ban the students from bringing food into the library.

Although he would rather die than admit it, Severus had a healthy respect for the ingenuity if the Weasley twins. Their Patented Daydream Charms, unwisely passed around in classes by some dunderhead student whose name he couldn't recall, had served as the inspiration to the potion he had chosen for Irma.

He left her with a quill dangling from her limp hand, reflecting that the stiff neck she inevitably would end up with in the morning would be worth it. Pausing on the threshold to the corridor, he turned back and belatedly cast a Cushioning Charm around her shoulders – neither of them were getting any younger, and Severus had learnt the hard way that it never paid to neglect his aching limbs.

Faced with the climb up to the North Tower he almost turned back, but Severus Snape rarely shrank from a task he had set himself. He had plenty of other failings to make up for his determination, he thought bitterly as he passed the snoring portrait of Sir Cadogan.

Presumably Sybill imagined the trap door and the rickety ladder added to the students' reverence for her subject – to a certain type of person, the far-flung and exotic promise to reveal truths the more prosaic world of their daily lives couldn't aspire to.

At seventeen, Severus had not found the premise as ridiculous as he ought to have had.

At thirty-seven, he ground his teeth and gently lifted from the floor, wafting through the air until a tap of his wand opened the door at the end of the climb. If his seventeen-year-old self had been gifted with the powers Sybill believed she possessed, he might just have been stupid enough to believe the price he would pay to achieve such feats would be worth it.

Teenagers, in Severus' extensive experience, were barely fit to get themselves dressed in the morning, let alone make decisions that would determine their future.

They certainly wouldn't get much guidance in the overgrown tea room Severus tried and failed to make his way through without dislodging any of the junk associated with the craft of Divination. Sybill had succumbed to his potion before she had reached her quarters – or perhaps it had been one of the empty sherry bottles littering the floor.

Severus frowned – he had timed the potion to take effect just before dinner. If Sybill had already downed three bottles by then, she needed his intervention more than he had suspected.

The byproducts of a magical detoxification were not pretty – the hem of his robes almost dipped into something unpleasant before he noticed the splatter. During a long weekend many years ago he had learnt that any stains would be impossible to remove. He had also learnt that Tobias Snape did not appreciate his son getting between him and his favourite vice.

He had been rather extraordinarily stupid as a fourteen-year-old, too.

This time, Severus harboured no expectations of success. He would be satisfied if he slowed down Sybill's decay somewhat, so that she may survive until the end of the war. Assuming there would be an end to the war.

Having ensured she wouldn't suffocate herself by accident, he left the room speedily, trying not to breathe until he was safely outside.

Only one member of staff remained on his list.

Even in these battle-hardened times, Hagrid had merrily tucked into the bottles of genuine ale that had mysteriously appeared in his larder. Watching him from afar earlier that evening, Severus had envied him for his simplicity – all Hagrid required was some ethanol and a seemingly endless supply of barely remembered drinking songs.

Minerva was quite a different matter.

Merely ensuring she consumed the potion he had brewed for her had been a challenge – Mad-Eye Moody would have been impressed with her refusal to consume anything of unknown provenance. Fortunately, being Headmaster came with some perks. It never occurred to Minerva to suspect the house-elves of tampering with her food, and Severus had long ago mastered the tricky variation on Obliviate required to affect non-humans.

Spending his impressionable youth in the Slytherin common room during the Seventies had at least served to equip him with some useful skills for later life.

Severus gladly could have continued all the way down to the dungeons to put some distance between him and the mess left behind in the Divination classroom (fortunately, this time there would be house-elves shouldering clean-up duties), but even several floors away the stench still clung to his nostrils.

No door at Hogwarts remained closed to the Headmaster; keeping Minerva's wards from alerting her to his presence was a different matter. Slowly, Severus untangled the web of spells she had woven, pausing only when he encountered an unfamiliar twist. It was almost like arguing with Minerva, trying to anticipate her next move while countering her current attack.

When the door finally clicked open, he almost expected a tabby cat to be waiting for him, sitting straight up, its tail swishing with disapproval. Minerva was quite capable of conveying her displeasure without resorting to anything as undignified as meowing.

Sirius Black had scratched her behind the ear once when she had been in cat form on Order business. Severus still treasured the memory.

The tabby cat failed to materialise; the only sign of life in Minerva's quarters was the sound of snoring echoing through the rooms. The right corner of Severus' mouth twitched a little as he calculated how much mileage he could get out of the fact that Minerva apparently snored like a trooper. He could keep her riled up for _weeks_ –

No, he couldn't.

Severus wrapped his robes tighter around him as he moved like a whisper through her sitting room. As usual, he had to wind his way around teetering piles of books stacked on the floor – there were only so many bookcases one could squeeze in. ' _Break with a Banshee'_ was in a prominent position next to her reading chair with a red-tipped quill tucked into it, confirming that his intervention was timely– Minerva only resorted to correcting Lockhart's writing when she found it particularly hard to sleep.

Last year, she had got through _'Voyages with Vampires'_ in two semesters.

The snoring came from her bedroom, just beyond the sitting room. Severus had never entered it before, but the unexpected pleasure of being back in Minerva's quarters, the space she had been living in for longer than he had been alive, carried him all the way across the threshold.

It was like coming home.

Minerva slept on her back, mercifully fully clad. Severus stretched his hand out as if to touch hers, just for a moment. One last time, before the end.

Neither of them were inclined to touch others easily – not like Filius, who slapped one's lower back as a matter of course, and eagerly clutched arms not offered to him when getting particularly excited about a subject.

Apart from accidental bumps and formal handshakes, Minerva had touched him deliberately perhaps half a dozen times during the three decades Severus had known her.

The last time had been when he had told the Order how Emmeline Vance had died. He had sworn the Unbreakable Vow to Narcissa just a few days earlier, only to be forced to participate in slaughtering his Order colleague two days later.

At the time, Severus had been at a loss how he would be able to last until the end of the summer, never mind the end of the war. After the meeting the kitchen in Grimmauld Place had been brimming with laughter and loud chatter as the gathering turned into a cosy family affair. The others seemed determined to enjoy a rare moment of catching up with their family and friends. Severus alone was left in the shadows, as if he already had cut himself loose from his companions.

At one time, he had almost believed he truly had become one of them. As the part he was set to play in Albus' game became clear at last, Severus realised he had been apart from the beginning.

The only choices that had mattered in his life had been the ones he had made before he had turned twenty-one.

A firm grip on his arm returned him to the present. "Don't give up on yourself, Severus." Minerva looked at him so intently he was afraid she was reading his mind. "It's Albus' job to see the big picture, but he tends to forget his chess pieces are people sometimes. That's what friends are for, you know." She nodded to Charity Burbage at the other side of the table, who beamed back at Severus.

Scrambling to put up his defences and formulate a response at the same time, he didn't manage more than a grunt. Minerva patted his arm again before heading for the teapot.

In the present, Severus snatched his hand back like he had been burnt, just as he was about to touch Minerva, and retreated as quickly as he could back to his office.

Ensuring she got a decent night's rest for a change was one thing – Minerva would never indulge in the Draught of Dreamless Sleep of her own volition, but Severus had seen the circles growing under her eyes as the term progressed and Hogwarts as they had known it paled into a distant dream.

Sneaking into her bedroom, however, suddenly seemed like an unforgivable betrayal – another one to be added to the long list.

As he headed down the rabbit hole of Albus' making, Severus had tried very hard not to count the price he was paying, but now the dragons were coming home to roast.

As a young man he had chafed at being cooped up at Hogwarts, cut off from anything that mattered in the wizarding world. He would never be a natural teacher – unlike Minerva or Filius, who delighted in finding a way to get across to the most recalcitrant student, Severus found most teenagers obnoxious rather than fascinating – but for the first time in his life he had been content.

They had grumbled and argued and plotted together, and somehow his colleagues had become friends without him even realising. The best of friends, the kind he had envied James Potter and Sirius Black and the rest of their band of reprobates even as he wrote them off as the worst kind of blockheaded Gryffindors.

Being a traitor in their eyes cut him far worse than he had expected; for someone who had regarded himself as an outcast for most of his life, Severus was oddly sensitive to each snub, every look of disdain as he carried out the Dark Lord's commands and turned Hogwarts into a battlefield.

He had weighed so lightly what they had given him, Minerva, Filius and the others – it was only when their trust had been broken he realised how much it had meant to him.

Tonight had been a dangerous indulgence, one last nod to the life they had shared. Unless the Fates were kind – and they never were, not to Severus Snape – there would be no more Special Potions, no more shared jokes or intricate plots to subvert Umbridge. He had been a fool to seek absolution from Minerva even when she was sleeping.

No more: he would play the game until the end, no matter what it cost him, because the price of failure was higher still.

The night wasn't quite over, however – Severus had another celebration, of sorts, planned for himself.

The Potions Master didn't need any potions for his own use; all he required could be found inside the Pensieve that had come with his office.

When he emerged from the silver mists it was a gloriously sunny day in Cokeworth– the kind of day the North of England is blessed with so rarely it is worth skipping school for, in case there is only a few of them that summer. The air was already simmering with heat above the cobblestones, even though it was only seven o'clock in the morning.

Severus knew better, of course – it was the sort of day that only happens once or twice in a lifetime; a perfect day. He set off down the laneway, towards the Evans' house.

 **THE END**


End file.
